Operational Code Analysis and Foreign Policy Roles


Book Description

In this book, senior scholars and a new generation of analysts present different applications of recent advances linking beliefs and decision-making, in the area of foreign policy analysis with strategic interactions in world politics. Divided into five parts, Part 1 identifies how the beliefs in the cognitive operational codes of individual leaders explain the political decisions of states. In Part 2, five chapters illustrate progress in comparing the operational codes of individual leaders, including Vladimir Putin of Russia, three US presidents, Bolivian president Evo Morales, Sri Lanka’s President Chandrika Kumaratunga, and various leaders of terrorist organizations operating in the Middle East and North Africa. Part 3 introduces a new Psychological Characteristics of Leaders (PsyCL) data set containing the operational codes of US presidents from the early 1800s to the present. In Part 4, the focus is on strategic interactions among dyads and evolutionary patterns among states in different regional and world systems. Part 5 revisits whether the contents of the preceding chapters support the claims about the links between beliefs and foreign policy roles in world politics. Richly illustrated and with comprehensive analysis Operational Code Analysis and Foreign Policy Roles will be of interest to specialists in foreign policy analysis, international relations theorists, graduate students, and national security analysts in the policy-making and intelligence communities.




Rethinking Foreign Policy Analysis


Book Description

Rethinking Foreign Policy Analysis presents the definitive treatment to integrate theories of foreign policy analysis and international relations—addressing the agent-centered, micro-political study of decisions by leaders and the structure-oriented macro political study of state interactions in an international system.




Routledge Handbook of Foreign Policy Analysis Methods


Book Description

The disintegration and questioning of global governance structures and a re-orientation toward national politics combined with the spread of technological innovations such as big data, social media, and phenomena like fake news, populism, or questions of global health policies make it necessary for the introduction of new methods of inquiry and the adaptation of established methods in Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA). This accessible handbook offers concise chapters from expert international contributors covering a diverse range of new and established FPA methods. Embracing methodological pluralism and a belief in the value of an open discussion about methods’ assumptions and diverging positions, it provides new, state-of-the-art research approaches, as well as introductions to a range of established methods. Each chapter follows the same approach, introducing the method and its development, discussing strengths, requirements, limitations, and potential pitfalls while illustrating the method’s application using examples from empirical research. Embracing methodological pluralism and problem-oriented research that engages with real-world questions, the authors examine quantitative and qualitative traditions, rationalist and interpretivist perspectives, as well as different substantive backgrounds. The book will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students in global politics, foreign policy, and methods-related classes across the social sciences.




Foreign Policy Analysis


Book Description




Beliefs and Leadership in World Politics


Book Description

Focusing on how policy makers make decisions in foreign policy, this book examines how beliefs are causal mechanisms which steer decisions, shape leaders and perceptions of reality, and lead to cognitive and motivated biases that distort, block and recast incoming information from the environment.




Foreign Policy Analysis


Book Description

This book presents the evolution of the field of foreign policy analysis and explains the theories that have structured research in this area over the last 50 years. It provides the essentials of emerging theoretical trends, data and methodological pitfalls and major case-studies and is designed to be a key entry point for graduate students, upper-level undergraduates and scholars into the discipline. The volume features an eclectic panorama of different conceptual, theoretical and methodological approaches to foreign political analysis, focusing on different models of analysis such as two-level game analysis, bureaucratic politics, strategic culture, cybernetics, poliheuristic analysis, cognitive mapping, gender studies, groupthink and the systemic sources of foreign policy. The authors also clarify conceptual notions such as doctrines, ideologies and national interest, through the lenses of foreign policy analysis.




Role Theory and Role Conflict in U.S.-Iran Relations


Book Description

U.S.-Iran relations continue to be an international security problem in the Middle East. These two countries could have been friends, but instead they have become enemies. Stating this thesis raises the following questions: Why are the United States and Iran enemies? How and when did this relationship come to be? When the relationship began to deteriorate, could it have been reversed? What lessons can be learned from an analysis of past U.S.-Iranian relations and what are the implications for their present and future relations? Akan Malici and Stephen G. Walker argue that the dynamics of U.S.-Iran relations are based on role conflicts. Iran has long desired to enact roles of active independence and national sovereignty in world politics. However, it continued to be cast by others into client or rebel roles of national inferiority. In this book the authors examine these role conflicts during three crucial episodes in U.S.-Iran relations: the oil nationalization crisis and the ensuing clandestine coup aided by the CIA to overthrow the Iranian regime in 1950 to 1953; the Iranian revolution followed by the hostage crisis in 1979 to 1981; the reformist years pre- and post- 9/11 under Mohammad Khatami from 1997 to 2002. Their application of role theory is theoretically and methodologically progressive and innovative in illuminating aspects of U.S.-Iran relations. It allows for a better understanding of the past, navigating the present, and anticipating the future in order to avoid foreign policy mistakes. Role Theory and Role Conflict in U.S.-Iran Relations is a useful resource for international relations and foreign policy scholars who want to learn more about progress in international relations theory and U.S. relations with Iran.




Understanding Russian Strategic Behavior


Book Description

This book examines the extent to which Russia’s strategic behavior is the product of its imperial strategic culture and Putin’s own operational code. The work argues that, by conflating personalistic regime survival with national security, Putin ensures that contemporary Russian national interest, as expressed through strategic behavior, is the synthesis of a peculiar troika: a long-standing imperial strategic culture, rooted in a partially imagined past; the operational code of a counter-intelligence president and decision-making elite; and the realities of Russia as a hybrid state. The book first examines the role of structure and agency in shaping contemporary Russian strategic behavior. It then provides a conceptual understanding of strategic culture, and applies this to Tsarist and Soviet historical developments. The book’s analysis of the operational code, however, demonstrates that Putinism is more than the sum of the past. At the end, the book assesses Putin’s statecraft and stress-tests our assumptions about the exercise of contemporary power in Russia and the structure of Putin’s agency. This book will be of interest to students of Russian politics and foreign policy, strategic studies and international relations.




Progress in International Relations Theory


Book Description

All academic disciplines periodically appraise their effectiveness, evaluating the progress of previous scholarship and judging which approaches are useful and which are not. Although no field could survive if it did nothing but appraise its progress, occasional appraisals are important and if done well can help advance the field. This book investigates how international relations theorists can better equip themselves to determine the state of scholarly work in their field. It takes as its starting point Imre Lakatos's influential theory of scientific change, and in particular his methodology of scientific research programs (MSRP). It uses MSRP to organize its analysis of major research programs over the last several decades and uses MSRP's criteria for theoretical progress to evaluate these programs. The contributors appraise the progress of institutional theory, varieties of realist and liberal theory, operational code analysis, and other research programs in international relations. Their analyses reveal the strengths and limits of Lakatosian criteria and the need for metatheoretical metrics for evaluating scientific progress.




Foreign Policy Analysis


Book Description

This book's introduction to foreign policy analysis focuses on decision makers and decision making. Each chapter is organised around puzzles and questions to which undergraduates can relate. The book emphasizes the importance of individuals in foreign policy decision making, while also placing decision makers within their context.